Wynlen House Urban Micro Farm

Wynlen House

Wynlen House started as a small enterprise following the age-old tradition of organic food production and growing food to be consumed locally. For us this means growing vegetables and raising sheep, poultry and pigs for meat on our large suburban block in the village of Braidwood, NSW. Our passion for garlic growing is fulfilled with our garlic partner at Clarevale Farm, Braidwood where we grow early, mid and late season garlic with the aim of making sure our fellow garlic lovers never have to go without organically grown, fantastically tasty garlic because we can supply our own grown garlic all year round. We sell vegetables from our weekly earth market stall, every Saturday morning in Braidwood's main street.

After eating our delicious vegetables and organically grown poultry, pork and hoggart our customers began asking how they too could successfully grow their own food in our region's harsh cool climate. So we developed training programs (on-farm workshops and on-line courses ) on How to Grow Garlic in Australia's suitable climate zones, How to Grow Vegetables All Year Round in a Cool Climate and How to Raise Small Farm Animals, all without pesticides or herbicides and Growing Garlic: An On Farm Workshop. We also offer comprehensive Mini Growing Guides to start you growing from your favorite family of vegetables. The first of these is Mini Guide to Pumpkin and Squash, of the genus Cucurbita, and the family Cucurbitaceae. Our growing techniques are scalable to larger spaces and bigger operations so when you want to plant more, you don't have to totally alter your gardening practices.

Growing food and raising farm animals offers opportunities to put meaning and productivity into your life. Working with the soil, helping it produce and practicing animal husbandry (raising animals) satisfies the human urge to keep in contact with the foundation of life. It provides focus and gives immense joy. Eating food that has been grown with passion, love and care is the best food in the world. It is food with soul and you can taste the difference.

Our Philosophy

We grow a large range of produce, we grow our produce to be consumed locally. This is called Slow Food. This approach is based on a concept of food that is defined by three interconnected principles: good, clean and fair:

GOOD: quality, flavoursome and healthy food

CLEAN: production that does not harm the environment

FAIR: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers.

All aspects of food, its quality, its origins, its preparation, how it arrives at our plate needs to be thought about. Every step in the process of growing food has an impact on our environment. Producing food organically and locally minimises this impact. This is simple honest food of the highest quality and we believe you can taste the difference.

There is nothing new about this. It is really only in the last 60 years of the twentieth century that the growing of food in home gardens and in local regions was not the norm. Prior to the introduction of chemical fertilizers in the early twentieth century, leading to large-scale broad acre farming, most food was produced locally and most people participated in some way in its production. We are part of this age old tradition.

Learning Centre

In 2017 we launched our Learning Centre with our first online course "Garlic, How to Grow It". This course grew from a wish to share our expertise as garlic growers, and conveners/ leaders of the Braidwood Garlic Growers Group which was awarded the NSW Landcare Champion award for Innovation and Farm Management in 2017. Garlic is a pleasure to grow and can be grown effectively on a small commercial basis.

Our mini-guides will roll out as we write them. Remember, in cooler climates planting times &times to harvest are different from those in other climate zones. Seed packet advice is seldom correct for cool climate zones (at least in our experience). The mini guides will address this issue too.

Our Beginnings Although we knew we could grow food for ourselves, it is quite a big step to consider supplying food for “customers” who are paying for what they received. We to supply directly to customers through a Community Support Agricultural (CSA) model. We approached some friends and acquaintances and asked if they would be interested in committing to buying produce from our garden on a weekly basis. We began in 2006 with six households who were happy to make this commitment.

In late 2009 we started a Community Produce Stall at the monthly Braidwood Ryrie Park markets. This was our first step into an open retail environment. We enjoyed running the stall at the markets and selling our produce along with produce from other other local growers.

In late 2010 we were approached by the Albion Café to sell vegetables on their verandah and we decided that direct retailing through a weekly market stall would be our new way forward. In 2011 we relocated our weekly stall to Dojo Lane and in 2016 we moved to our current location in the courtyard of 56 Wallace St., Braidwood.

For us the key focus is about caring where our food comes from; how and where it is grown; and how it is processed, prepared and shared. We have a strong interest in (re)developing, organic, sustainable and local food systems using agricultural practices that have environmental, economic and social outcomes. To this end, in 2012, Wynlen House started running workshops on growing vegetables in a cool climate and on basic animal husbandry; practical education for people wishing to grow food (vegetables and animals). In 2013 we held the first of our slow food lunches extending our promotion of small-scale agriculture. In January 2016 we ran a pop up slow food cafe further demonstrating the viability and sustainability of small scale farming as a method of feeding local communities… as it used to be.